A Fundamental Technique for Handling People

Dale Carnegie once took a course in short-story writing at New York University, and during that course the editor of a leading magazine talked to his class. The editor said he could pick up any one of the dozens of stories that drifted across his desk every day and after reading a few paragraphs he could feel whether or not the author liked people. “If the author doesn’t like people,” he said, “people won’t like his or her stories.”

This hard-boiled editor stopped twice in the course of his talk on fiction writing and apologized for preaching a sermon. “I am telling you,” he said, “the same things your preacher would tell you, but remember, you have to be interested in people if you want to be a successful writer of stories.”

If that is true of writing fiction, you can be sure it is true of dealing with people face-to-face.

Alfred Adler, the famous Viennese psychologist, wrote a book entitled “What Life Should Mean to You.” In that book he says: “It is the individual who is not interested in his fellow men who has the greatest difficulties in life and provides the greatest injury to others. It is from among such individuals that all human failures spring.”

Showing genuine interest in people will be evident in everything you do. And consequently, showing a lack of interest will be obvious as well. Here’s an example of this important principle in action from your friends at Dale Carnegie Training of Alabama:

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